The Cygnus cargo spacecraft that Orbital Sciences Corp. launched Sunday from Wallops Island berthed safely at the International Space Station early Wednesday, NASA said. The Cygnus arrived on schedule on its Orb-2 mission and was grappled at 6:36 a.m. by the space station's robotic arm. Second-stage capture was completed at 8:53 a.m. with the Cygnus tucked into the Harmony module port as the station flew 260 miles over northern Libya. The six crewmen of Expedition 40 aboard the space station are still processing the space freighter - pressuring the vestibule and checking for leaks - before opening the hatch around 6 a.m. Thursday, according to NASA.

The Cygnus cargo spacecraft that Orbital Sciences Corp. launched Sunday from Wallops Island berthed safely at the International Space Station early Wednesday, NASA said. The Cygnus arrived on schedule on its Orb-2 mission and was grappled at 6:36 a.m. by the space station's robotic arm. Second-stage capture was completed at 8:53 a.m. with the Cygnus tucked into the Harmony module port as the station flew 260 miles over northern Libya. The six crewmen of Expedition 40 aboard the space station are still processing the space freighter - pressuring the vestibule and checking for leaks - before opening the hatch around 6 a.m. Thursday, according to NASA.

9 a.m.: Astronauts on the International Space Station have captured the Cygnus spacecraft with the space station's robotic arm and are preparing to dock with it. You can watch the docking at this website . ------------- One week after a data glitch caused it to abort its first attempt, Orbital Sciences Corp. will try again Sunday morning to berth its new Cygnus cargo spacecraft with the International Space Station. Times are still tenuous, but Orbital says the Cygnus is expected to begin approaching the station at around 3 a.m. Sunday to begin the hours-long grappling and installation operation.

A launch at last. After more than two months of delays, and with the gray Atlantic lapping at the beach just a few yards off, the Antares rocket blasted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island at 12:52 p.m. on the dot Sunday, lofting a Cygnus space freighter toward the International Space Station. Antares launches are visible across Hampton Roads and up and down the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard, weather permitting. But within a minute the booster and the bright tail of its first-stage engines were swallowed up by thick cloud cover.

The astronauts will have to wait - an unexpected data glitch postponed by 48 hours the Cygnus spacecraft's scheduled berthing with the International Space Station, officials said early Sunday. The unmanned commercial cargo craft made its approach as scheduled in the wee hours, but encountered an issue in some of the data it received from the station, said Barron Beneski, spokesman at Orbital Sciences Corp., which developed the Cygnus and its Antares rocket booster. "The data that Cygnus received from the International Space Station wasn't what it expected to receive," Beneski explained in a phone interview.

At long last, lift-off. After a month of frustrating delays, an unmanned Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft is finally on its way to the International Space Station, vaulted skyward by an Antares rocket that launched flawlessly at 1:07 p.m. Thursday from Wallops Island. It's the first operational mission for Virginia rocket-maker Orbital Sciences Corp. under a $1.9 billion NASA contract to ferry supplies to the ISS through 2016. Immediately after lift-off, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulated "Orbital and the NASA teams that made this resupply mission possible.

After spending five weeks at the International Space Station, the Cygnus commercial space freighter that launched from Wallops Island last month is set to disembark Tuesday. The unmanned Cygnus delivered about 2,800 pounds of crew provisions, science experiments, hardware and spare parts after it launched Jan. 9 aboard an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Eastern Shore. It docked with the station four days later. On its return flight, the Cygnus will be packed with disposable cargo - or space station trash - and is slated to burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Virginia's spaceport is taking another step toward becoming a major site for commercial cargo missions to the International Space Station with the anticipated arrival of the Cygnus spacecraft at Wallops Island on Wednesday. According to NASA, the cargo carrier is set to arrive around 6 p.m. at its Wallops Flight Facility. Over the next few months, engineers from Orbital Sciences Corp. will begin stocking it with supplies bound for the space station. NASA awarded Orbital a $1.9 billion contract to build the Cygnus and the medium-lift Antares rocket to make eight resupply missions to the station.

At 7:31 a.m. Tuesday, 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, newly unlatched from a massive robotic arm, the Cygnus spacecraft began easing away from the International Space Station against a pivoting backdrop of clouds and continents. It was a flawless departure for Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp.'s commercial craft on its demonstration mission to prove it has the right stuff to run cargo to and from the orbiting laboratory for the next several years. "And so Cygnus bids farewell to the International Space Station," a NASA official in Mission Control Houston remarked during a live stream of the undocking on NASA Television.

WALLOPS ISLAND — Moments after the Antares rocket vaulted from the spaceport at Wallops Island Wednesday morning, launching a cargo craft to rendezvous with the International Space Station, Marie Ange Sanguy was wiping away tears. Editor and founder of the magazine Espace & Exploration, headquartered in Auriol, France, Sanguy is a self-described "space addict. " Although she's watched the launch of two space shuttles – "one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life" – the Antares was her first time watching a rocket fly. "Space and aviation were always in my family," Sanguy said.

By Robert Brauchle, rbrauchle@dailypress.com and Daily Press | May 25, 2014

A power seldom used in Hampton Roads allowing community development authorities to borrow millions of dollars to benefit private developers has been both an economic boon and a burden in Hampton. The city's two community development authorities (CDAs) oversaw the creation of the largest mixed-use development - Peninsula Town Center - and the rise of the most delinquent property owner - Cygnus H2O Phase 2 LLC - of the past decade. So are CDAs a financial pitfall, or a spur for economic development?

SpaceX scrubbed its resupply launch from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station at the last minute Monday because of a helium leak in its first-stage rocket, which makes the May 6 resupply launch from Wallops Island even less likely, experts say. The next earliest launch window for SpaceX would come at 3:25 p.m. Friday, NASA said, although SpaceX noted the weather on that date "isn't ideal. " It's the latest in about a month of delays for SpaceX, and it pushes the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket to send cargo from Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS)

Orbital Science Corp.'s next cargo mission from Wallops Island to the International Space Station is officially May 6 - but that launch might be postponed a month or more because of a wide range of issues, officials say. First, a fire at Cape Canaveral in Florida knocked out some of its radar tracking ability, said Orbital spokesman Barron "Barry" Beneski from his Dulles office. Then, in a sort of domino effect, that radar loss delayed two launches from the Cape, including one by SpaceX, the other company that makes commercial resupply runs to the space station for NASA.

Last week, NASA cut most of its ties with Russia over the political crisis over Crimea, leaving observers wondering how it might impact space science and exploration - or even national security. The ripples are being felt even here in Virginia, headquarters of Orbital Sciences Corp., the private space transportation company that relies on Ukraine for the main core of its big Antares rocket. Orbital launches from Wallops Island spaceport on the Eastern Shore, making crucial resupply missions to the International Space Station.

After spending five weeks at the International Space Station, the Cygnus commercial space freighter that launched from Wallops Island last month is set to disembark Tuesday. The unmanned Cygnus delivered about 2,800 pounds of crew provisions, science experiments, hardware and spare parts after it launched Jan. 9 aboard an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Eastern Shore. It docked with the station four days later. On its return flight, the Cygnus will be packed with disposable cargo - or space station trash - and is slated to burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

At long last, lift-off. After a month of frustrating delays, an unmanned Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft is finally on its way to the International Space Station, vaulted skyward by an Antares rocket that launched flawlessly at 1:07 p.m. Thursday from Wallops Island. It's the first operational mission for Virginia rocket-maker Orbital Sciences Corp. under a $1.9 billion NASA contract to ferry supplies to the ISS through 2016. Immediately after lift-off, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulated "Orbital and the NASA teams that made this resupply mission possible.

Hampton Roads will have to wait an extra day - or longer - to see the Antares rocket blast off from Wallops Island to deliver supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station. The launch that had been set for Wednesday night is now rescheduled to no earlier than 9:19 p.m. Thursday as NASA engineers continue to grapple with a glitch in the station's cooling system that arose last week when a flow control valve malfunctioned. NASA officials now say it's looking like Thursday will mark either the first official resupply mission for the Antares and its Cygnus cargo craft, or the first of a suite of spacewalks by ISS astronauts to replace a faulty cooling pump.

A mere 12 days after finessing its first moon launch, Virginia's fledgling spaceport on Wallops Island launches a commercial cargo craft to the International Space Station Wednesday. At 10:50 Wednesday morning, a massive Antares rocket lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore. It boosted a Cygnus cargo spacecraft packed with 1,300 pounds of food, clothing and tools to attempt to dock with the orbiting space station.

When a liquid-fueled rocket vaults into space, there's a whole lot of sloshing going on inside those fuel tanks. A better understanding of how that liquid behaves in zero gravity could help engineers build a better, safer rocket — one that could enable humans to explore asteroids, Mars, the moons of outer planets and, eventually, even deeper into space. Now NASA expects that one of the many science experiments aboard the Cygnus commercial space freighter set to launch Wednesday from Wallops Island to the International Space Station will help toward that goal.